How to be an Ally on International Women’s Day (and all the other days, too!)

Margherita Adragna, president, Vehicle Group EMEA

I am proud to help accelerate the advancement of women in the workplace. As a member of Eaton’s WAVE (Women Adding Value in Eaton) iERG Executive Women’s Council and the leader of our Ally Advocacy initiative for the company, I see firsthand how we can help make those advancements possible.

Ally Advocacy is a wonderful endeavor with a vision that may seem unexpected but which makes a lot of sense. That vision is to “foster the learning and understanding of our male allies in order to better leverage their support to accelerate inclusion and advancement for women at Eaton.” It's basically helping men to empower women!

Achieving true gender parity and making the sweeping change we need won’t come from dialogue and collaboration between and among women only. It is important to leverage the male population (often a majority in the workplace) to help us remove barriers to women. Because removing those barriers helps everybody.

What is an ally at Eaton expected to do? It’s an important ask with a vital set of tasks. It means you will stand up for gender equity, be an inclusive leader, actively support efforts to advance women in the workplace, be a role model demonstrating inclusive behaviors and raise awareness in others. It’s action over words. Commitment over compromise. Challenging to drive real change.

In that spirit, International Women’s Day is a big day with big themes. Challenge, advocate and transform. And the work of Ally Advocacy aligns quite well to those themes. We won’t accept excuses or lack of action on advancing women. Let’s challenge the status quo. Leverage our male colleagues as advocates to drive faster, transformative change by challenging biases, conscious or unconscious. 

That commitment is happening in a big way.

As part of International Women’s Day, we will be holding more than 100 Ally Advocacy Discussion Circles across the world. These discussions will be co-led by female and male senior leaders to increase awareness of biases causing barriers to the advancement of women. I’m excited to see the issues that will be raised and the subsequent actions taken to solve those issues, ultimately driving the transformation to a more gender equity workplace.

What sort of things are you doing to recognize International Women’s Day?